


Me and my heart (We got issues)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Steve McGarrett Has Issues, Steve McGarrett Needs a Hug, most of the early team makes tiny appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21763786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: “I’m in love with you, Steve,” Danny says. He does it softly, quietly, laying the words into the darkness of Steve’s backyard like they’re something breakable, something to be tiptoed around. “I thought you should know.”Steve’s heart jumps. It rams against his ribcage so hard it’s going to leave bruises. So hard he startles awake, and he almost yells before he realizes he’s outside because he fell asleep in one of the garden chairs in his backyard again.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 18
Kudos: 376





	Me and my heart (We got issues)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miek1976](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miek1976/gifts).



> This is a fill for a prompt from [Miek1976](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miek1976) ([surewouldbeinteresting](https://surewouldbeinteresting.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr), which I’ll put in the end notes! The title is from the song _Issues_ by The Saturdays.

Steve is no stranger to wanting in vain. He’s not a man who cares about material possessions or prestige or even his own life very much in that way – he wants to use it to do good, and he’s doing good, so he’s satisfied – which means that what he usually wants most is a person. His mom, his dad, Mary, aunt Deb, Freddie. None of that is new.

The thing that makes wanting Danny so different, so confusing, so much more painful- It’s that he already has Danny.

Or at least he thought he did. 

* 

“I’m in love with you, Steve,” Danny says. He does it softly, quietly, laying the words into the darkness of Steve’s backyard like they’re something breakable, something to be tiptoed around. “I thought you should know.”

Steve’s heart jumps. It rams against his ribcage so hard it’s going to leave bruises. So hard he startles awake, and he almost yells before he realizes he’s outside because he fell asleep in one of the garden chairs in his backyard again.

He looks around to make sure, but he already knows he’s alone.

*

“Jesus,” Danny says, when Steve gets to the office on Monday. There’s nothing soft or quiet about it. “You look terrible.”

“So do you,” Steve shoots back. He says it just to be contrary and a little mean to Danny – Danny kicks him, he kicks back – but then he takes a good look at Danny, and actually- He frowns. “Seriously, you look like you barely slept. What’s up?”

Danny shoots him an unnecessarily dark look. “Really? I could ask you the same thing.”

“Hello to you too, Steve,” Chin says pointedly. He’s right behind Danny and yet Steve barely even registered his or Kono’s presence.

He drops the issue of Danny’s mysteriously deep grouchiness for a moment to pull an apologetic face at the others. “Sorry. Morning Chin, Kono.”

“It’s alright, boss,” Kono says easily. She grins in a way that promises bad things. “I’m more interested in what kept both of you up this weekend. What were you doing instead of sleep?”

Danny groans. He snatches his venti cup of coffee from the corner of the tech table in a way that makes Chin wince because he nearly spills half of it, and then he walks off and disappears into his office just like that. 

Steve stares after him for a long moment, dread descending over the world like a heavy veil. When he looks back at Chin and Kono, they’re already looking at him for a response, so he shrugs, hoping it comes off as unbothered rather than helpless.

“Well,” Kono says with a sympathetic smile that impossibly doubles as a leer, “I guess that answers one question, at least. That’s definitely not the behavior of a guy who just got laid.”

“Kono,” Chin says, in that tone of his that perfectly encapsulates the way rolling eyes should sound, but is somehow more polite.

Steve keeps quiet. 

*

The backyard is calm, familiar, peaceful. “I’m in love with you,” Danny says carefully, but he might as well have set off a grenade for all that Steve’s ears are suddenly ringing from the impact and his body feels torn to shreds.

“No, you’re not,” he manages to choke out, and then he’s awake, and the sound he’s hearing is not a ringing but a steady rush of ocean beating against shore. He stays in his chair for a long time, staring out into the darkness and not seeing much of anything, until he finally works up the bare minimum of energy needed to drag himself inside.

*

In spite of the warning signs, there’s still an ember of hope in Steve’s chest that refuses to be ground into total nothingness just yet. It’s what causes him to occasionally ask things at the end of a workday like, “Wanna get a beer?”

He only tries that a few times, because he inevitably gets the same kind of answer. “Can’t,” Danny says, this time.

He leaves it at that, forcing Steve to ask, “Why?”

Danny grins, but it doesn’t look right. It looks like an animal baring its teeth in warning before it bites. “I have a date.”

“Ah,” Steve says, and casts about for what he’d say if he were a good friend. If hearing something like this didn’t drown all other feelings out with jealousy and subsequently guilt over said jealousy, and if things weren’t incredibly weird between him and Danny for reasons that are probably all his fault, even though he has no clue why. “Have fun.”

“Thanks.” Danny says it in such a way that it sounds awfully close to fuck off, and then he turns on his heel and leaves. 

Steve is more than ready to go home too, but he stays right where he is. He watches Danny walk away and lingers in the office for another five minutes before he follows, just to be sure they won’t run into each other in the parking lot.

*

He deliberately does not go out into his backyard that night. And still, he ends up there, and again- 

“I’m in love with you,” Danny says, hope in his voice, and Steve experiences a kind of violence that feels like being run over slowly with a Hummer and is most likely all in his head, because a moment later he wakes up in bed, bathing in his own sweat. 

*

Danny is late to work the next day. He’s wearing the same clothes as the day before.

*

The dreams, they started happening right around the time that Danny’s behavior changed, which is too perfect to be a coincidence. The only sensible conclusion Steve can draw is that he must have said something, somehow. Maybe Danny heard him talk in his sleep while he took a nap at the office during their previous case. He could have said any number of incriminating things, though there’s certainly one he’s more afraid of than the others.

He never took Danny for the kind of guy who’d act like this if he found out their best friend harbored feelings for him that run deeper than they’re supposed to, but then again, Danny wouldn’t be the first.

*

Crime continues to need fighting. Work is tense, and Steve takes to avoiding not just Danny but also Chin and Kono after hours, because they’ve definitely picked up on the fact that this is not just a normal disagreement between him and Danny. Danny hasn’t spoken to him first about anything that isn’t work-related in eighteen days, and when he finally does, it’s worrying rather than something that inspires hope.

“How’s Catherine?”

They’re on their way to see Max at the ME’s office and there is no build-up to the question whatsoever. Steve thinks he’s pretty justified in feeling lost when it gets dropped in his lap. “Catherine?”

“Catherine,” Danny says. It’s acerbic enough that Steve feels it bite right through his clothes and sink into his skin. Worse, Danny keeps looking at him, and Danny has an unfair advantage in that department because he isn’t operating a car at the moment and thus not forced to pay a minimum amount of attention to the road.

“She’s alright,” Steve says, even though it’s more of a guess than based on actual current knowledge. He hasn’t talked to Catherine in more than a few weeks.

“How nice.” Danny smiles tightly and turns back to his passenger window. It’s a small movement, but it’s demonstrative enough to be very effective at shutting Steve out, like Danny’s been doing for weeks now.

Steve should probably do something about that. He should fight it. He should talk to Danny and confront him, or change the default way the team gets split to ensure smoother work days, or maybe even consider whether Five-0 and Hawaii are still the right place for him. Under normal circumstances, he would do some if not all of those things. This time, he feels paralyzed, incapable of doing anything but watch a friendship he put his trust in crumble before his eyes.

So he leaves Danny be. If he can’t be with Danny, not even as a friend, maybe he can at least make Danny’s life less miserable by not trying to insert himself into it any more than necessary. That’s another thing Steve is no stranger to.

*

Of course that thought never held water, but it gets really leaky around the time Danny says, “I’m in love with you.”

There’s an ocean; there are garden chairs; Steve is either drowning or burning alive or both, and somehow he feels overwhelmingly guilty about it anyway. He wakes up and he can’t say for sure that he doesn’t wish that he hadn’t.

*

Hosting a team barbecue seems like a disaster waiting to happen, but both Kono and Chin make the suggestion multiple times and with increasing pressure behind it. Eventually, Steve caves, but he makes sure to invite not just the core team but also Max, Fong, Kamekona and Flippa, because the more people he can put between him and Danny, the better. He’s not at all expecting Danny to bring Grace along, and it’s a shock to see her again for the first time in a month. He’s at once delighted and scared to death that she might hate him now too for reasons that he can’t control.

He need not have worried: when he leaves his spot at the grill for a moment to duck inside and get himself another beer, he doesn’t even reach the kitchen before he senses that he’s being followed. His pursuer is about half his height and wears her hair in pigtails. “You okay, Gracie?”

Grace tucks her hands behind her back. There’s something more quiet about the way she’s acting than he’s used to from her, but there’s no malice in her expression whatsoever. “Yes. I had one of those sausages and it was very good. Thank you for having us over for your party, Uncle Steve.”

A smile tugs at his mouth. It’s an unexpected feeling after twenty-four hours of queasiness in the lead up to this event. “Anytime, Grace. You know that.”

Grace nods, but where she usually is as ready to go with a response as her dad is, now she just presses her lips together into a tight line. It looks like she does have the words, but isn’t sure if she’s allowed to say them.

Steve’s hint of a good mood disappears. He puts the empty beer bottle he’s still carrying on the closest available surface and beckons for Grace to follow him to the couch, which she does, still silent. He waits until they’re both sitting down before he starts asking questions. “What’s up, sweetheart? Can I help you with something?”

Grace takes a deep breath and blurts, “Why do we never see you anymore?”

He doesn’t see it coming. That’s the crazy part. He expects to miss people; not that people miss him.

He feels nauseous. “You do still see me,” he says. “I’m here right now, aren’t I? We’re right next to each other.

“But this is a team thing. Danno and I used to be over here all the time, just the three of us.” She doesn’t say it like she’s making some grand point, but like it’s obvious that this team gathering doesn’t count for what they’re talking about. She’s right, of course. He can’t argue with that.

He doesn’t know how to even begin to talk his way out of this, and he’s not sure he wants to, either. What he wants, what he really wants, is to tell her that she makes a really good point and that he agrees and that he’s dying to know the answers to her questions himself.

Grace wrings her hands and watches him precisely. “I just don’t get it. Don’t you want to have us over anymore?” 

The nausea is not the worst of his problems. It feels like someone is taking a cheese grater to his heart. “Of course I do, Gracie.”

“Then why? I love you, and Danno loves you maybe even more, so it’s just really stupid and everyone is sad now.”

“Grace,” Danny snaps. Both Steve and Grace startle and look up, and they find Danny just inside the lanai door. Steve’s not sure how long he’s been standing there, but that’s not even what’s most jarring, because that would be the fact that he just lashed out at Grace.

Something is _wrong_.

“Danny,” he tries, but he’s ignored.

“Grace, you should start packing your stuff. We’re leaving.”

“Why?” Grace asks, a whine in her voice. “I’m not finished talking to Uncle Steve.”

“Yes, you are,” Danny tells her. He’s not snapping anymore, but he’s still unusually brusque for the fact that he’s talking to the girl he’s described as a perfect ray of sunshine that makes life worth living, who doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong at the moment.

Except talk to Steve, that is. Maybe that’s enough for Danny, these days. Steve’s heart sinks.

He gets up, dragging his limbs along. “I, uh- I have to go anyway, Gracie. Sorry.”

Grace looks hurt and Steve hates himself, and then he catches a flash of something like _I knew you’d do that_ in Danny’s eyes and he hates Danny, just a little, for making him do this and then looking down on him for it.

“I’m sorry, Gracie,” he repeats, and bends down for a hug. He doesn’t check with Danny whether it’s okay, because Danny might say no and it could very well be Steve’s last chance.

“See you soon, Uncle Steve,” Grace says, but even she sounds like she knows that’s not going to happen.

Steve does his best to smile at her. He glances at Danny, whose face is a mask, and jogs up the stairs, fleeing his own living room. He doesn’t come back down until Kono comes looking for him an hour later, and then he pretends he was taking a nap and fakes tiredness to get his guests to politely offer to leave him so he can rest up. He doesn’t ask when Danny and Grace left, but they’re nowhere to be seen, so presumably they’re long gone.

*

“I’m in love with you,” Danny says that night, like he genuinely means it. 

Steve’s heart is in his throat, where it’s slowly being strangled. “Why would you say that?” he screams, spitting out blood along with the words. “Why do you keep saying it when it’s not true?”

Danny doesn’t hear him. This Danny isn’t real, but a product of his own imagination, and he’s just talking to himself. When he wakes, his throat is hoarse and he needs water desperately, but he stays right where he is, panting up at a ceiling that’s as white and empty as he wishes his heart were.

*

It’s a weekend that lasts forever, and not in any good way. When Monday morning finally deigns to roll around, he shows up to the office as expected. Kono and Chin ask if he’s feeling better, and he lies and says yes, and then he asks where Danny is, because he’s late and that never happens. Kono and Chin exchange a look and Chin says, “Didn’t you get Danny’s text?”

He did not. Apparently, Danny texted the entire team but him that he’s taking the day off because he’s come down with a stomach bug.

It doesn’t sit well with Steve from the get go. If the story were true, there would be no reason for Danny not to tell him. Even with the tensions, this is not some personal chitchat about nothing – this is about the job, which is a type of communication that up until now at least still flowed at its barest minimum. So Danny could really be ill, or he could be pulling back even further. And if he is, what does that mean? 

_He’s leaving the island,_ Steve’s brain supplies, while he’s in the middle of typing a word for his most recent case report. His hands freeze over the keyboard, his heart goes numb and his mind blank with panic for a split second. That could be it. He didn’t give Danny enough space and Danny is fed up with it, so now he’s leaving, and he’s uprooting Grace again and it’ll be Steve’s fault, because he forced Danny into this. 

And even if that’s not true – even if that’s not it at all – there still the fact of the matter that he saw Danny behave towards Grace in a way he’s never seen before at the team barbecue, just for a second. Steve’s issues, either way, are now spilling over into Grace’s life, and that’s, that’s-

*

He ends up in front of Danny’s house without taking the time to really think this through. He rings Danny’s doorbell loudly and three times and he holds it on the last attempt, until finally the door opens to a Danny who looks pissed off and healthy. He’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but nothing else seems to be wrong with him.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he snarls, which further confirms Steve’s suspicions.

“Can I come in?” he asks, and then, before Danny can say no, “I’m coming in.” He tries to squeeze inside past Danny and he’s almost surprised when it doesn’t end up in a physical altercation, but Danny instead lets him pass with grinding teeth but without a word.

Steve takes up a position in the middle of the room and Danny closes the door. That’s when the nerves slam back into Steve, but there’s no time for that. Danny is watching him, one eyebrow raised snidely, the message that Steve is the one who barged in here and so he’s the one who should talk very clear. 

If that antagonistic way is how Danny wants to handle their relationship now, that’s fine. Steve can throw accusations around, even if he can’t really muster up the right energy to yell them. “I’m here to ask what’s wrong with you.” That has no visible effect on Danny, so he makes a second attempt with heavier ammunition. “You can decide to ignore me, fine, but this is hurting Grace. I don’t get it, Danny. How can you do that?”

That’s enough to get a reaction. It’s fury, of course, but that’s something. “How can _I_ do that? Do you even hear yourself?”

“Danny,” he says. He doesn’t know how to follow that up. Nothing seems good enough. “I love you.” He can taste the inadequacy of the words, but it’s all he’s got. It’s Hail Mary time.

Danny laughs with a sharp, unhappy sound. “Jesus, Steve. What, dancing around it isn’t good enough for you anymore? You’ve decided to rub it in now?”

Steve stares at him, because he can’t do anything else. “What?”

“You know damn well-”

“Remind me.”

Danny sneers at him. He takes a good few seconds for that, and then he says, with the air of somebody pointing out obvious facts, “I told you I’m in love with you and you laughed in my face. How was I supposed to feel about that, huh?” He comes closer, and it might be an unconscious intimidation tactic or the actual prelude to a punch. Danny’s arm is already raised, but it’s to point a very sharp finger. “I don’t care if you don’t feel the same. That happens. But to tell me that I’m wrong about my own feelings for you-”

“No,” Steve says, and Danny’s face hardens, and Steve sees it happen before his eyes and is helpless to stop it, like he’s on the other side of a glass wall screaming while nobody hears him, so he says again, “No. No, that’s- I dream that, I keep dreaming you tell me that, but it’s not true. It’s a nightmare, I-”

Danny pokes Steve in the chest hard enough to hurt. “It’s not a nightmare, you unbelievable asshole. A couple of weeks ago, we were sitting in those chairs in your backyard and I told you-”

“I’m in love with you,” Steve says. “I thought you should know.”

“Yes.” Danny lowers his arm. He’s yelling a little less, but more contemptuous to make up for it. “So suddenly you do remember, huh?”

Steve shakes his head. He can’t seem to stop doing that. “No. I remember dreaming it.”

“It wasn’t a dream. Why are you so convinced of that? How is it so hard to believe that I’d-” Danny breaks off, goes from angry to surprised to really worried in the span of two seconds, and is suddenly a lot closer than he was before. His hands are on Steve’s shoulders. “Steve. Steve, breathe, okay? It’s alright, it’s going to be fine, just breathe.”

Danny pulls at him and they move and the next thing Steve is fully aware of, is that he’s seated in a chair with his head between his legs and Danny keeping up a steady stream of empty reassuring words. Even with all the recent bad memories, the wash of Danny’s voice still makes Steve’s brain think he’s safe and in good hands. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m sorry, I-”

Danny’s hand lands on his shoulder and rubs his arm. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. Just don’t pass out on me, deal?” 

“Yeah.” He tries to sit up and Danny tries to keep him bent forward, but Steve ignores his advice. “I’m fine,” he insists, and sits up anyway, because he needs to see Danny’s face. “I think I said the wrong thing and didn’t know how to fix it.”

Danny is standing next to the chair and he’s not visibly angry anymore. He looks sort of lost instead. “So you seriously didn’t realize I said that in the real world? You were torturing yourself with reenactments that went nowhere?”

Steve takes a shaky breath. “I’m not- I’m not very good with this stuff.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Danny says, which is all kinds of inappropriate and perfect.

Steve huffs a laugh, and he’s still wondering at that and the miracle of seeing humor in anything right now, when Danny suddenly fills up his field of vision and consequently every bit of conscious thought he’s capable of producing. 

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve echoes. “I’m sorry I was an idiot.”

“You were.” Danny is very close. He’s crouching in front of Steve’s chair, his hands resting lightly on Steve’s knees. “And you know what? So was I, majorly. And you know what else?”

Steve shakes his head. He doesn’t trust his voice.

“It doesn’t matter. I felt livid and betrayed for a month and a half and it didn’t change a thing, because I still love you, for better or for worse. I’m still _in_ love with you.”

Steve does not get torn up or run over or burned or strangled. Instead, he’s sitting right where he was, in a chair pulled away from Danny’s dining table instead of in his own garden, Danny in touching distance instead of a chair away, and nobody is dreaming. “Yeah?” he croaks, because he’d like to hear it again, but then he changes his mind about what’s most urgent. “Danny. I’m in love with you, too.”

“Yeah, I know.” There’s humor in Danny’s voice. “After recent revelations, I had a hunch. But thanks for saying it.”

“We need to work on our communication,” Steve says, and he doesn’t do it to be funny, but Danny grins anyway, and he’s right. Steve manages a smile that feels okay; not as breakable as it easily could have been.

“Are you feeling better now?” Danny asks.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Danny squeezes Steve’s knees and makes use of them to push himself up. He doesn’t let go, which puts their faces in awfully close proximity. “Still good?”

Steve licks his lips. “Yeah. I think so.” 

“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong and that I should leave and then going to avoid me for the next two months?”

“We should probably talk,” Steve points out. His voice sounds weak to his own ears, and when Danny moves another inch closer, so does he. Their noses brush. Steve can hear Danny breathe.

“Right now?” Danny asks, quietly.

“Yes.” Steve is not really sure anymore what he’s agreeing to, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. Danny’s lips brush his and so he presses forward and kisses Danny, actually kisses him, and Danny kisses him back, and his heart pounds like crazy and something buzzes.

Danny pulls back, and their lips make a soft sound when they part, and it’s only a good two seconds of confusion later that Steve finally realizes the buzzing is his own phone. Danny is groaning, a hand over his face in despair, but he’s also laughing, so Steve figures he’s fine. “At least now you can be sure it’s not a dream,” Danny says. “This is not how fantasies work.”

“Yeah, it is. You’re in it.” It punches another laugh out of Danny, but this one sounds almost startled. Steve makes use of Danny’s delayed verbal response to liberate his phone from his pocket and pick up. “Chin?”

“Steve, hi.” Chin sounds relieved. “You left suddenly and never came back to the office. You okay?”

He makes eye contact with Danny, who raises both eyebrows at him. “I’m at Danny’s place.”

“Okay,” Chin says, carefully neutral. It’s nearly a question in itself.

Apparently, Chin’s phone is on speaker, which becomes pretty clear when Kono asks, “Are you guys alright?”

“I think so.” Steve’s eyes automatically stray to Danny again. Danny’s taken up position leaning against the table, arms folded, waiting with reasonable patience for Steve to finish his call. “Hey, uh- Listen, it looks like this bug Danny has is getting to me too. I don’t think I’m going to make it back in today.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Kono says, even though she sounds gleeful rather than anything resembling sorry while she says it. “Must be an incredibly fast-acting virus. Or do you think you were carrying this around for a while now?”

Steve can’t see it, but he knows the exact amused but tolerant expression Chin is wearing at the moment. “So we’ll see both of you tomorrow, then?” Chin asks.

“Yeah. Tomorrow.” Tomorrow, when he gets to the office, he’ll bring the entire team huge cups coffee and at least two whole bags of malasadas. 

Chin and Kono tell him to say hi to Danny and to get well soon, and the call ends. Suddenly, he’s completely alone with Danny again.

Danny, who’s been watching him. Danny’s just a few paces away, but it feels like a distance of miles with the memory of a kiss so fresh on his mind. They stare at each other for a long moment. “So let’s talk,” Danny says eventually, and it’s not careful and not tiptoed around. He lays it on the table, for Steve to take it or leave it.

It’s odd, because Steve is pretty sure that should make him nervous. Instead, he wants to laugh. There’s no ocean sound and no bruising and no loneliness. “Yeah. Let’s talk.”

Danny grins.

*

His amble towards wakefulness is slow and peaceful, until the breeze on his face or the taste of the air clues him in to the fact that he’s outside. He trips and crashes into being awake, and-

“Whoa,” Danny says. “You’re okay, Sleeping Beauty.”

He’s in his own backyard. The ocean rushes, the air is tinged with salt and there’s a familiar chair under his back. He opens his eyes to bright sunlight. He turns his head, and there’s Danny, occupying the other chair, like he’s always belonged there and always will.

“You’re okay, Steve,” Danny repeats, and Steve relaxes and takes Danny at his word for it. He should do that more often.

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt from [surewouldbeinteresting](https://surewouldbeinteresting.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr: “I'd love to read a fic that's completely POV Steve, heavy pining, but none know the depth of his feelings and Danny actually told Steve that he's in love with him, but Steve didn't hear him and can't believe it if he may think he heard him. Now Danny is pulling back and starts to date, but never looks happy and Steve is dying inside and wants to make Danny happy, so he also pulls back and now grace has to fix it before Steve reinlists or Danny leaves...” I took some liberties which how Grace’s role played out, but I hope this hit the spot!
> 
> -
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments are, as always, given a warm welcome and offered free coffee or tea. ❤
> 
> I’m on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 (and mostly McDanno) sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


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